Efficacy and cost-effectiveness analysis of external beam and stereotactic body radiation therapy in the treatment of spine metastases: a matched-pair analysis.

Object: The objective of this study was to compare the palliative efficacy and cost effectiveness of external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) to stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) as primary treatment for bone metastatic disease of the spinal column.

Methods: Forty-four patients were matched based on age, primary tumor site, year of treatment, and location of metastasis. Outcomes of interest were pain relief, cost-effectiveness, toxicities, and need for further intervention.

Effect of fibrin glue on the prevention of persistent cerebral spinal fluid leakage after incidental durotomy during lumbar spinal surgery.

Approximately one million spinal surgeries are performed in the United States each year. The risk of an incidental durotomy (ID) and resultant persistent cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage is a significant concern for surgeons, as this complication has been associated with increased length of hospitalization, worse neurological outcome, and the development of CSF fistulae. Augmentation of standard dural suture repair with the application of fibrin glue has been suggested to reduce the frequency of these complications.

Radiosurgical pathology of brain tumors: metastases, schwannomas, meningiomas, astrocytomas, hemangioblastomas.

Systematic human pathological background to brain tumor radiosurgery explaining biological and pathophysiological effects of focused irradiation barely exists. The goal of this study was to explore histopathological changes evoked by single high-dose irradiation in a set of different brain tumors following Gamma Knife radiosurgery (GKRS). Light microscopy revealed that GKRS evokes degenerative and proliferative pathological changes in the parenchyma, stroma and vessels of the irradiated tumors.

Cerebral metastases pathology after radiosurgery: a multicenter study.

Background: To the authors' knowledge, comprehensive human pathologic investigations that explore fundamental radiosurgical effects on metastatic brain tumors are sparse in the literature. The objective of this study was to analyze histopathologic findings in a set of clinically recurrent cerebral metastases after patients underwent stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS).

Methods: In a series of 7500 patients who underwent radiosurgery, 2020 patients (27%) harbored cerebral metastases.